Bingham Dai, Adolf Storfer, and the Tentative Beginnings of Psychoanalytic Culture in China: 1935–1941

Analytic ideas began to circulate in China from about the second decade of the twentieth century. But it was not until the late 1930s, and then only briefly, that a psychoanalytic culture emerged due chiefly to the efforts of two men whose brief stays barely overlapped. Bingham Dai, a native of China, and graduate of St Johns University in Shanghai, received a psychoanalytic training while studying for a doctorate in sociology in Chicago. He returned in 1935 to take up a position at Peking Union Medical College, teaching medical psychology to Chinese doctors, setting up a small analytic training group and seeing patients. He left in 1939 for America because of the intensification of the Sino-Japanese war, bringing his program to a close. Paradoxically, war brought Freud's publisher, Adolf Storfer, to China in 1939 to escape anti-Semitic Vienna. Establishing himself in Shanghai, Storfer set about publishing Gelbe Post, a periodical written for the German-speaking expatriate community, the aim of which was to explore connections between Asian cultures, psychoanalysis and linguistics. However, he came under the scrutiny of the Japanese authorities and left in 1941 for Australia where he died three years later.

Both men, in situ, had shown a sensitivity to Chinese culture, which contributed to the success of their efforts to foster psychoanalytic awareness in their respective communities. Exile brought these to a close. This paper looks in detail at these events and considers the relative historiographical fate of the two men.